By EMILY SPARACINO / Staff Writer

Students from Chelsea High and Oak Mountain High schools won awards for their work in the district’s Visual Arts Achievement Program hosted by the University of Montevallo.

CHHS senior Kristen Hamby took first place in printmaking for her linoleum block print titled “The Importance of Vanity,” while OMHS senior Sydney Harrington won first place in drawing for her piece “Unveil,” and OMHS junior Diane Rojas took first place in mixed media for her piece “Fine Art” and second place in painting for her painting “Oversized Still Life.”

“I sure do love my job as it provides me with the opportunity of working with these amazing young ones,” OMHS art instructor Nicole McKinney said. “I couldn’t ask for a better group and couldn’t consider trading any of the relationships I have built with my students and with my peer educators.”

As winners at the local level, all of the students will have the opportunity to enter their artwork in the state VAAP competition in April.

The VAAP is sponsored by the Alabama State Council on the Arts.

“Shelby County Schools are well represented in the state show,” CHHS art instructor Max Newton said.

Newton submitted 14 pieces, including Hamby’s print, made by students in ninth-12th grades at CHHS to this year’s show.

UM faculty members were judges for the district, and students participating in the show attended workshops on the campus one day, Newton said.

“We have a really good time,” he said.

Hamby is in Newton’s AP 2-D Design class. Earlier this year, Hamby and CHHS sophomore Kaitlyn Avery were chosen to display pieces in the Alabama State Superintendent’s Visual Arts Exhibit.

Hamby’s piece in the exhibit was a watercolor painting titled “Self-Portrait.”

Harrington and Rojas are in McKinney’s AP 2-D Design class.

In her drawing “Unveil,” Harrington used “expressive scribbling to depict overlapping portraits in pencil,” McKinney said.

“She has been experimenting more and more through the years I’ve had her and is eager to create, to learn and to grow as an artist,” McKinney added. “She is a phenomenal young lady whom I will miss tremendously following her graduation. I am certain we will keep in touch though.”

McKinney said Rojas’s mixed media piece “Fine Art” incorporates street art and recognizable works on a graduated collage panel surface.

“She focuses very much on color and contrast and is passionately drawing to graffiti as an art form,” McKinney said. “I am thrilled to say that Diane will be in AP Drawing with me again next year. Only Diane’s mixed media piece will compete at the state level, along with Sydney’s drawing.”